The HDL/triglycerides trap - high density lipoprotein - interview with William Castelli, director of the Framingham Heart Study - interview

Nutrition Action Healthletter, Sept, 1990 by Bonnie Liebman

There are plenty of reasons for younger women to watch what they eat. Studies from China show that if your cholesterol is low, you won't get breast or colon cancer or diabetes either.

Q: Are there any Americans who don't have to worry about heart disease?

A: Hardly anyone. within the last three or four years, with the help of ultrasound, we can look in inside the carotid artery in the neck. We find that 70 percent of the men and women over 65 in Framingham have lesions big enough to see easily, and that ten percent have at least a 50-percent blockage. Once it's in your carotids, its already in your coronary arteries.

Q: Then why dont 70 percent of men and women appear sick?

A: Nothing happens until you get 50-percent blockage of an artery in your heart. The first symptom is angina, a tightness, heaviness, or pain in the chest that usually occurs with physical exertion and is relieved within minutes if you rest. Occassionally it will radiate into your neck, left shoulder, or arms.

When you add a clot to the blockage, you have a heart attack. Now, I can dissolve the clot with drugs like TPA, but we're back to the blockage that was there just minutes before the clot.

About one-third of the women and men in America will have a clinical episode, such as a heart attack, stroke, or a blockage in an ertery in the leg, before they're 65. The rate of these diseases is higher after 65, and not quite half of us in America will die from this process.

Q: Is there any group of people who are free of heart disease?

A: Yes, but they live in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Now, I can give those people the disease, too. All I have to do is fly them to Rio, tokyo, or Taipei with a generous food allowance.

Q: How can we take the bad stuff out of the Amercian Diet?

A: We should get no mre than ten percent of our calories from saturated fat. At 2,000 calories a day, that's only 22 grams of saturated fat. The average American eats about 40 grams a day.

Let's take a hamburger patty. Choice beef, which is what's usually in the store, has 12 to 15 grams of saturated fat. You blew more than half of your ratio for the day on a single hamburger.

But now you can buy Select beef that's not fattened in a feed lot. It's not the Select beef that's sold most supermarkets. I get my ground beef mail-order from Dakota Lean in Winner, South Dakota. It's only ten percent fat. That's less than five grams of saturated fat in a hamburger.

Q: What do you tell people who are tired of chicken?

A: There are many more choices. You can eat beans. You can eat 97% fat-free-ham--lean ham, not pork chops. It has the same amount of saturated fat andcholesteral as chicken.

Q:What about shellfish?

A: There are two kinds. Oysters, clams, scallops, and mussels don't move. They lay around and suck in the phytoplankton--the vegetables of the sea--which makes these shellfish the vegetarians of the sea. Just like vegetarians all over thw world, they have the lowest cholesterol. I say if you can't be a vegetarian, eat one from the sea.